SunTrust Park is the new home of the Atlanta Braves, the city’s Major League Baseball (MLB) franchise. With a capacity of over 41,000 the stadium had a soft opening on March 31, 2017, hosting a preseason game before the first regular season game was held on April 14.

Constructed as a public / private partnership, and with a project budget in excess of $620 million, SunTrust Park includes all the design elements and technology of modern sports stadia. And that includes the concourse lighting!

(Image: Luminis)

Like most stadium concourse areas, the main SunTrust Park concourse features a variety of food and beverage retail units. These areas are often full of people before, during and after the game, wandering to and from their seats, to purchase refreshments or to visit the restroom.

With so many people moving around the area, often in the evening, it is important that the concourse is well lit. illume, the architectural lighting design division of ME Engineers, was tasked with illuminating the space.

(Image: Luminis)

“The intent for the concourse lighting was for it to be clean and evenly lit” explained Ryan Linton, Lighting Project Manager at illume.

In order to achieve that even illumination it was important to select the right products and configure them in the right way.

One hundred Aramis AR150 cylinders from Luminis were used to do the job. A sloping ceiling reaching up to around 27 ft at its highest, and obstacles such as large fans to work around provided challenges. The designers had to work with mounting heights, fixture configuration and optics options to achieve the desired uniform lighting effect.

(Image: Luminis)

The team at illume configured the cylinders four fixtures per bay in a square formation at 21 ft on center. All of the fixtures were mounted to be 20 ft from the floor, and spaced to ensure even lighting on the floor as well as some vertical illumination of the concessions.

In addition to the main concourse lighting, the illume team also designed in lower wattage versions of the Aramis AR150 fixture on the upper concourse.  About fifty of these are installed, two per bay, behind the seating areas.

Aramis AR150 cylinders are high power pendants with an LED light source. Delivering more than 13,500 lumens per 6” diameter cylinder, they have the power to evenly illuminate the SunTrust Park concourse despite its height. The Aramis AR150 also has a 45° swivel to assist with installation on sloped ceilings like the one at SunTrust Park.

(Image: Luminis)

The long lifetime of 86,000 hours is also advantageous from a maintenance point of view.

As well as performance, the clean cylindrical shape of the Aramis AR150 products fit the modern aesthetic the designers were striving to achieve, making it the ideal choice.